Xbox One will not support AMD’s Mantle, and PS4 is also unlikely. Is Mantle DOA?

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Note: Feedback we’ve gotten from other sources continues to suggest that Microsoft’s low-level API for the Xbox One is extremely similar to Mantle, and the difference between the two is basically semantic. This doesn’t square very well with Microsoft’s own statements; we’ll continue to investigate.

One of the highlights of AMD’s Hawaii event last month was the introduction of AMD Mantle, a new, close-to-metal API that would supposedly unlock huge additional performance and address many of the issues that plague DirectX. The implications of this move, given that AMD technology is powering every upcoming console and the current Wii U, was that the new API might also be supported cross-platform, across multiple consoles. AMD itself made no such promises, but a number of people ran with the idea anyway. Mantle, it was rumored, was the Xbox One API ported over for mainstream PCs. This even made some sense — Mantle was pitched as the secret sauce that would allow the Xbox One’s weaker graphics processor to go toe-to-toe with the PS4. Efficiency beats brute strength! Or something like that.

Yesterday, Microsoft released a blog post that kills the notion of Mantle as a direct port from Xbox One. According to the company, Xbox One’s DirectX 11.x support “provides a superset of Direct3D 11.2 functionality. Other APIs such as OpenGL and AMD’s Mantle are not available on Xbox One.” The post goes on to discuss the extensive use of tiled resources in Direct3D 11, improved performance for sharing data across CPU and GPU, reduced presentation overhead, and improved rendering latency.

The Xbox One will support AMD’s GPU’s ability to use tiled resources directly via API

In short, these are many of the advantages that AMD has also claimed for Mantle. But similarity of function doesn’t imply similarity of code, and Microsoft’s unequivocal statement implies that Mantle and Xbox One’s API are two different beasts. Given the similarities between the Xbox One and PS4 APU, it’s probably fairly safe to assume that the PS4 also doesn’t support Mantle.

Brilliant strategy, or bridge too far?

So far, the only company that’s publicly declared for AMD’s Mantle is Dice, which will deliver a patch for Battlefield 4 that enables Mantle support sometime in mid-December. The game launches on October 29, implying that it’ll take some additional work — though not too much — to bring the API up to snuff. Dice’s presentations on Frostbite 3 make it clear that the company is adding Mantle support to more than just BF4; the Frostbite 3 engine will be able to use the new API in all upcoming titles as well. Thus far, the new Mirror’s Edge prequel, Need for Speed: Rivals, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, the next-generation Mass Effect, and the Star Wars: Battlefront title (scheduled for 2015) are all confirmed as being based on Frostbite 3. That’s a solid beginning for a new API, but it’s just a beginning.

Dice’s own explanation for why they’ve adopted Mantle bears touching on. In its presentation at the AMD Hawaii event, the company showed the following slides:

The situation with Mantle, therefore, seems similar to the situation with HSA. The Xbox One and PS4 don’t claim to be fully HSA-compatible, but still offer most, if not all, of the actual features of that platform. Mantle is designed to give the PC space many of the benefits of console APIs, while preserving the broad compatibility that allows the PC space to be more flexible. It’s also possible that Mantle offers a particular benefit to APUs, where Intel has been steadily closing the gap between itself and Sunnyvale for several product generations. If Mantle can offer a 10-15% real-world performance benefit over DirectX 11 running on an APU, that gives AMD a substantial upwards kick. Combine that with Kaveri’s GCN-based hardware, and AMD’s next-generation APU could finally bridge the “good enough” gap in gaming, once and for all.

But the catch, of course, is adoption. It’s not surprising that Microsoft would avoid Mantle. There’s an intrinsic tension (likely exacerbated by Microsoft’s deep-rooted organizational power struggles) between improving gaming on the Xbox One and improving gaming on Windows. Historically, meanwhile, GPU features that are only supported by one company tend to die slow deaths. AMD incorporated a tessellation engine into every Radeon HD 2000, 3000, and 4000 card, but until DirectX 11 and Fermi, the capability went unused. Nvidia’s hardware-based PhysX enjoyed modest success for a few years, but never became the must-have feature that Nvidia was hoping for when it bought Ageia. The company’s briefings and presentations barely mention hardware PhysX at all these days, and the release of new titles has slowed to a bare trickle. The last successful third-party API was 3dfx’s Glide, which enjoyed massive success for several years — but Glide was released at a time when 3D gaming was in its infancy, OpenGL support was badly fragmented (and slow), and Direct3D barely existed

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James Tolson

it would make no sense for Microsoft to ever support mantle in this manor, why would they want an API to compete with their very own direct 3d? they can directly control the development of direct3D and with it (for now at least) the entire gaming market..

Sony on the other hand may find value in mantle in years to come as a replacement Opengl but nothing has to be set in stone right now, maybe in a few years…

Joel Hruska

What I’m hearing from other people suggtsts that the MS blog post was classic CYA and written more because of tension regarding the superiority of DX11 — not any actual capability difference between Mantle and Xbox One’s API.

The situation remains muddled.

Michael Norris

Sony has an awesome API for Ps4.You think it’s just some run of the mill OpenGL.Also DX11.2 isn’t that great,the Open GL API Sony has customized is damn good basically codes to metal.DX11 isn’t as lean as it could be,MS changed certain things about it for Xbone but it’s not enough to give it an edge in the API department.

James

Unless you are making a game for both the xbox one and ps4 you have no clue which system’s api gets “closer to the metal”.
Only multiplat developers that have worked on both devkits know if one is better or worse. Everyone acts like they already know everything about these systems and which one is better at this and that. If you are a developer making the same game for both systems then i apologize. If you dont fall into this category then how do you know which api is better?

James

Unless you are making a game for both the xbox one and ps4 you have no clue which system’s api gets “closer to the metal”.
Only multiplat developers that have worked on both devkits know if one is better or worse. Everyone acts like they already know everything about these systems and which one is better at this and that. If you are a developer making the same game for both systems then i apologize. If you dont fall into this category then how do you know which api is better?

Failz

You forget that OpenGL gets updated almost every year where as DX hasn’t had a big change since 2008…. DX12 is designed for 2014 so expect a big difference between DX11 and DX12. Also people need to stop comparing OpenGL 2013 version to DX11 2008 version. Of course OpenGL will be better with the optimisation over the years.

DarthDiggler

So now it’s news to report that previously reported news that was based on assumptions is false? :)

I see what you doing there blog-o-sphere. Pass off rumor and assumptions as news than report on it when you are wrong distancing yourself from the previous stories. :)

Classy!

NicolaMantovani

AMD already knew everything about this and much more. More time is needed to see how it actually will work out for devs.

Ian Skinner

DX is only as good as it’s development and since the first days the 360, MS has hindered any DX growth to keep the 360 relevant in graphics capabilities to the ever evolving PC GPU market. I hope that AMD can do the right thing and not play the proprietary game with it.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000639808167 Jamel Frazier

Well why would AMD build an API and share it with their direct competitor?

Erik

Money, that’s why!

Guest

Wrong post sorry.

FireFox Bancroft

Mantle is open and available to anyone who wants to use it, that includes nVidia. But will nVidia use it? nVidia has access to TressFX because it’s not closed source either but I haven’t seen any support coming from nVidia for it even though they can.

Michael Norris

Manttle is for Pc’s as well since everyone uses DX.As I said before DX can get in the way,this is one reason why Valve is using OpenGL,oh and the fact they are getting much better benchmarks on OpenGL then DX11.

They then went on to fully optimize the game for opengl, and all they had to show for it was a mere 20% increase. Pathetic

Directx11 > opengl

annoynimous

20% is the difference between 50 FPS and 60 FPS, what pot are you smoking right now?

Mattrimkevx

My point is that a game like crysis 3 which is running on dx11.1 (not dx9 like l4d and half life 2) would more than likely see a decrease in performance when ported over to opengl.
Most new games like battlefield 4 are all running on dx11, performance in the bf4 beta was evidence enough of the difference between dx11.1 (win8) and dx11 (win7), let alone the difference between dx9 and dx11.1.

Opengl is getting a lot of praise currently because it’s not directx, and because valve supports it.
It still hasn’t reached the stage where it can properly compete with directx.

DurkaDerper

Why would consoles need mantle? It was built for PCs anyway

FireFox Bancroft

PC x86 architecture. When are you people going to realize they’re not consoles anymore?

DurkaDerper

Consoles have Low-Level API’s (Like Mantle) out of the box with the SDK. They don’t need Mantle, they already hve their own system made and paid for.

Jeremy Garcia

I hate the xbox for this very reason. They’ll use a GPU that supports multiple API’s, but will refuse to support any API other than DirectX (hence Xbox: DirectX Box), making an ultimatum for crossplats: Use DX or loose out on sales for Xbox. This is a key reason why DX thrives today instead of being replaced by OpenGL, or even Mantle, despite its… shortcomings. However, something like SteamOS/Steam Box could shake things up, since there isn’t any DX support on Linux.

Joel Hruska

The implications I’m hearing is that the Xbox One and Mantle are *extremely* similar, and that the Xbox One post was written to defend DirectX after it got slagged as slow and inefficient.

If so, that’s tremendously annoying. But it also makes sense in a lot of ways. The things DX11.x does for the Xbox One are exactly the sort of things that Mantle is doing for the PC.

annoynimous

MS is and will always be monopolistic in nature, what does the gamer community expect? social services? pffft

If Steam, Steambox and SteamOS kicks off and Mantle joins in the Linux department, MS has A LOT to worry about. Gamers can finally kiss windows goodbye.

Steve pritchard

Alot of us kissed windows goodbye years ago! Its irrelavent to the pc gaming world. Which is why microsoft is pushing it so heavily on tablets, phones and xbox one. Xbox one looks to be microsofts last ditch attempt to make us like windows again. Im over this company and have absolutely no plans to purchase xbox one in the coming year or maybe longer. Theyre pr nightmares of contradicting themselves has caught up with them.

franken stein

lol if by “alot of us” you mean the 5% that actually have then ok. MS and windows isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I laugh at this website its so full of bias bogus articles and “sources”. It’s like an exact opposite and parody of what an actual respected media site is.

Steve pritchard

I never said ms or windows were going anywhere. I just said theyre irrelavent. And in the pc gaming world they are. Windows was leading the pack back in the day. Before they had any competition. Now that there are better alternatives . As far as this site goes yeah its a joke like most. What im saying is microsoft is no where near the lead dog like they used to be.i dont know where you get only 5 percent . I know lots of people saying the same thing im saying now. Xbox is just about all ms has going for ut right now. And if they dont stop with this pr night mare even the xbox wont save them any more. Only a ms fanboy would tell you different.

Viliami Tuanaki

No. There aren’t any better alternatives to windows.

liam

so 91% of all computers are irrelevant?

cytrax

“And if they dont stop with this pr night mare even the xbox wont save them any more. Only a ms fanboy would tell you different.”

Let me guess; you actually think any of the vendors out there are not in the game to make money? You think Apple, Valve, Sony or RedHat somehow don’t care about money and shareholders’ value as much as Microsoft?

You people talk nonsense thinking that you are somehow enlightened and more grounded on principles than the other guy that you claim is a Microsoft fanboy. What is really lame is that you’re not even aware of the fact that whatever you choose to go with has the very same defined purpose as Microsoft – to find a way to take your money while filling you with warm fuzzy feeling that they care about you.

franken stein

lol if by “alot of us” you mean the 5% that actually have then ok. MS and windows isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I laugh at this website its so full of bias bogus articles and “sources”. It’s like an exact opposite and parody of what an actual respected media site is.

Viliami Tuanaki

No. Nobody has kissed windows goodbye. Most people probably sticked with windows 7 instead of 8 but hardly anyone left windows. (Where to? Linux, OSX?)
Windows is the only thing Microsoft has gotten right. (Not the Xbox)

doctorpankake

Mantle is meant to bring console-like hardware access to PCs. Not to consoles.

zapper

Make students attracted to it and see it soaring high.
Add Matlab functionality at H/W level.

disqus_vGUqLSa646

This website is getting terrible with is bias against the xbox. Im sick of all these anti xbox articles and ones like this not even targeted on only xbox but the title still pretty much says “HEY XBOX DOESNT DO THIS…………………….*super small print*ps4 doesnt either”
How about you get some real journalistic integrity and stop putting personal opinion in articles.

http://www.flawlessri.com/music_videos.html LLaqui

B000oo0000!!

Guest

Mantle is open source it can work on AMD, Nvidia & Intel GPUs just fine…

Guest

Mantle is open source it can work on AMD, Nvidia & Intel GPUs just fine…

Al Benoit

XBone and PS4 are the only platforms ever. Nothing else exists. Nothing else matters.
Both these consoles wont support Oculus Rift either so I guess that’s DOA too. Seriously…

Daniel James Matheson

PS4 doesn’t need Mantle as they use openGL and PSSLPSGL. Pretty much every Microsoft based system needs something to replace DX.

In spite of 11.1 making many big improvements and optomisations for windows 8.1 it’s still clunking and inefficient.

I love my Nvidia cards but if Mantle gets backing of all the major game developers for PC and improves graphics performance of GPU’s then i’ll quickly jump ship.

DOA? Not in the slightest, it was never going be reading for these consoles.

samav

The best analysis if this topic so far is by Mak Wu on RSI forums. He clearly proves it is the same API and they are merely calling it different things to save face. I think he starts posting in earnest around page 3 or 4.

Mantle is dead because it’s AMD-only. Like sort-of-mentioned above, Radeon has had hardware tessellation since 2001 and nobody used it because it was only ATI cards. Only when all the vendors had the feature was it used and only used in the past couple of years really.

heck, even old AMD cards can’t use Mantle.

Nvidia will never support Mantle. Why would they support something that favors AMD cards?

Asgard

Exactly. And support for just a small range of devices mean much higher development costs and unpredictable gaming experience for the games. Devs want gamers to have consistent experience, not optimized experience to a specific hardware with 10 % market share. This is why PhysX failed too. But I hope this makes MS to consider doing more for DX than they have been doing lately.

FireFox Bancroft

I’ve got bad news for all you trogs, Mantle support is coming to Steam Machines because Valve has plans to support AMD hardware configurations in the public release of Steam Machines and SteamOS. Steam machines are PC’s after all.

DOA? There’s something called a PC, and PC’s and PC gaming is far from dead. Both AMD and Nvidia can use Mantle. To suggest Mantle is dead, is to suggest that PC gaming is dead. You’re a moron.

BileMonkey

MS unlikely to support Mantle anytime soon for the above reasons. However, if it will work on the PS4 and the improvement is significant I can’t see why they wouldn’t allow developers to utilise it should they chose to. Anything that increases their gap ahead of the XBone is good for business. Looking forward to seeing what difference it makes.

One one ever thought mantle would be on the consoles. mantle would be utterly pointless on the consoles, because they already have their own highly optimized API’s. What kind of idiots actually thought the xbone or ps4 would support mantle?

And this article mentiones that DICE is the only company that has announced games supporting mantle, and this is just totally false. off the top of my head I can already think of several non-ea games that will be supporting mantle. Thief and Start Citizen for example. Oxide games recently showed a mantle presentation where they have their game engine running on it.

This article is 100% idiodic flamebait. I don’t know what the author was smoking, but the fact that mantle won’t be on the consoles is completely irrelevent, no one, AMD included expected mantle on the consoles.

Stacey Bright

The idea of Mantle on consoles made a lot of sense because it would because of the potential uniformity of development across all 3 platforms, albeit favoring AMD. Highly optimized or not, whats the likelihood of it being completely more efficient than one produced by the chip designer. That’s almost like saying you’d rather have MS doing your AMD/Nvidia graphics drivers now. For it to be the standard API among the console’s AMD already powers, along with the fact that console’s getting more development attention overall, it would force everyone else’s hand to support it on PC. That would end up being a good thing if it does whats promised. It remaining PC only leaves too much room for it be highly disregarded in spite of its obvious potential benefits and can only encourage increased fragmentation.

The best option to become a standard doesn’t always win out, and often looses for the wrong reasons. Like the strength of who’s backing it. While I’m a bit too young to have first hand experience, I’ve heard numerous times that Beta-Max was supposedly superior to VHS, but VHS became the standard solely due to being a popular Adult film medium. While Mantle has much potential, its obvious that those with most power in the industry would prefer to make it fail.

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